Saturday, November 28, 2009

Wem-berley, Wem-berley

Sometimes life is just too ridiculous for words. These photos were taken at Wembley Stadium.

Wembley!

Me!

Playing football!

Badly!

It was a charity event - a match played against a team of soldiers - for Help for Heroes. The spine of our team was pretty damn good. Ralf Little and Chris Kamara were able to control the midfield in the first half. In the second half, the soldiers superior fitness showed.

I was more of an agricultural right back who's not really agricultural enough but not cultured enough to be called anything else. I did make the assistant referee say, "Oh, well done" once though. That's plenty enough for me.

In fact (puts on biased sportsman's hat) we had a perfectly good goal disallowed in the first half so technically we should have won. But who wants to spoil a hero's day?

If they'd had their shooting boots on they should have scored at least four in the second half but they put most of their opportunities over the bar. As a defender, my role as they turned away having skied another one was to turn to my colleague and say, "I think I did enough to put him off"

We had rolling subs - which this particular unfit lump was very grateful for and two of our side were soldiers as well because we were lighter in numbers than them and everyone wanted to get a decent run out.

Despite my ineffectiveness as a player I will say this... we conceded two goals... but I wasn't on the pitch at the time. It was a clean sheet on my watch, a clean sheet yes sirree.

"We had rolling subs - which this particular unfit lump was very grateful for..."

Hold on! Aren't you the "unfit lump" who's just cycled around the UK? I'd suggest that puts you in a category of endurance and stamina. You're obviously saying that because you didn't want to embarrass your team mates and as you said to make sure everyone got a run out, aren't you?